


The So-Close-But-Not-Quite

by CobaltStargazer



Category: John Sandford's Certain Prey
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Guns, Hit Woman, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 10:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4915795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're not supposed to take it personally. That's the first rule of the job. But every rule gets broken at least once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The So-Close-But-Not-Quite

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the TV movie version of this on Amazon Prime, and thus a plot bunny was born. If only because the idea of Tatiana Maslany and Lola Glaudini making out was too awesome to pass up. As far as I can tell, this is the first story from this particular fandom in existence, so enjoy. :-)

Clara Rinker never took risks.

Her first job was almost an accident. Almost. She'd only asked to be able to hurt the guy, beat him up, but when it was over he was dead and her shirt was splattered with blood and brain matter. That was how her employers decided that she had potential for other things. _Bigger_ things. They gave her name to some people, and those people got in touch with her. She got a new job, found a new calling. It was profitable, and the work, while she knew the daylight world frowned on, was something she excelled at.

That was how she met the lawyer.

The lawyer's name was Carmel Loan, and even though the nosy cop Clara had had to shoot made things complicated, the two of them had managed to smooth out most of the wrinkles. A dead cop always got everyone's attention, but there was something in the lawyer that responded to what Clara did for a living. Took to it like a duck to water, in fact, since by the time everything was over she'd killed three people herself. Had she been the type to get starstruck, the hitwoman might have asked Carmel if she'd ever considered a career change.

They were having drinks one night at the lawyer's apartment, an oddly companionable situation all things considered. And maybe it was the booze or maybe it was the way the light struck Carmel's brown hair, or maybe it was that Clara was a little infatuated after all, because she was the one who initiated the kissing. She'd meant what she'd said when she'd mentioned that the two of them should pick up one guy and do him together; she _was_ straight, and despite what had happened to start her on this path to begin with, she liked men and liked sleeping with them. But Carmel was...she was Carmel, and there was something about a high-class lawyer shaking and trembling under the touch of a runaway who'd become a contract killer. You weren't supposed to fuck on the job. You certainly weren't supposed to fuck the client. But in that so-close moment, with the attorney busily licking and sucking between her thighs, Clara had felt something like love.

They'd spent the night in the lawyer's bed, on black silk sheets, and in the morning neither of them talked about what had happened. They'd had a cup of coffee in Carmel's well-appointed kitchen, and then Clara had left, to what she'd described as parts unknown. She'd kissed the taller woman quickly on the cheek, and she hadn't looked back for the sake of self-preservation. Once the job was done, you took your money and you moved on to the next piece of work.

And then the bastard cop killed Carmel.

Clara had seen it on the news, the story running while she was at the bank cleaning out her safe deposit box. A bystander had recorded it on his cellphone, and the local news was having a field day with the recording. If a dead cop was news, a cop shooting one of Minneapolis' top lawyers was bigger news. "Can you believe it?" the teller had said, and Clara had just stared at the TV screen. "They'll show _anything_ on the news these days."

She emptied the box's contents efficiently - cash, fake passports, some jewelry. She knew she'd have to go into hiding for a while. The St. Louis people wanted her dead, had sent two men after her. She'd gotten rid of them, but she knew there would be others. In this business, there were always others. So she'd transferred the things from the box to her briefcase and departed, bidding the helpful teller an absent good day.

Then she cried for the first time in a couple of years. 

The tears waited until she was alone, thank Christ, but when they came, they brought plenty of company. She'd never had many friends, not even in the life she'd had before this one, and she _knew_ she wasn't supposed to take it personally. Death was a business, killing people a job the way stripping had been a job. But for the one night that she and Carmel had been lovers, that had mattered. It had mattered, and now the lawyer was in the fucking morgue.

Clara Rinker never took risks. But when she decided to try to kill the bastard cop, it was a risk with a purpose behind it. And she had always been purposeful. It was too bad, in a way, because when she'd fooled him into dancing with her, she'd kind of liked him. But she could live with 'too bad'. She'd killed people she'd kind of liked before.

She'd waited for him, late at night in the shadows, and if it hadn't been for that damned manuscript he'd been carrying she'd have put a bullet clean through him. That he was also armed, with a hand cannon of a gun, drove her further into the darkness, and she'd been forced to scale the fence between his house and someone else's. She'd heard him coming after her, but what passed for her sanity had been restored. She'd faded into the dark until she was a shadow of a shadow. The cop was the only person she'd ever set out to kill and didn't.

Later, once she was well away, she gave the bastard a call, and as expected he promised to catch her. Clara hoped he did. She owed him a bullet. If not for herself, then for Carmel, who'd been the only person she'd come so-close-but-not-quite with.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has mostly been an experiment, and I'm not even convinced its very good. I will now return you to your regularly scheduled CM-Verse. :-)


End file.
